Food And Shelter
by mandaree1
Summary: Artemis doesn't much eat at home. She also doesn't sleep at the base. Both of which are rectified, in their own way.


**Disclaimer: I don't own Young Justice or Invasion!**

 **Title: Food And Shelter**

 **Summary: Artemis doesn't much eat at home. She also doesn't sleep at the base. Both of which are rectified, in their own way.**

 **Setting: Pre-Season two, could be during season one or during the time skip, Whichever works for you.**

 **...**

It's not that Artemis doesn't like food. She does. Seriously. If someone were to ask her about her relationship with nutritious substances, she'd say it was pretty dang healthy, thanks. And that's part of the problem.

Artemis could eat most girls her age under the table (she could, coincidentally, also drink them under the table if the need arose. Let no one ever say having a psycho for a father didn't have its perks). It's a hero/villain/vigilante/in-between thing, apparently. When you spend most of your afternoons and weekends disarming bombs and dodging bullets, you tend to eat more than your average teenager. Like, a lot more. She wasn't on par with Wally or anything (thank the gods), but she still ate like a starved hippo, especially after a long day of training.

It's the whole 'being unable to afford it' thing that sucks.

Neither one of the occupants in the Crock-Nguyen apartment household had a (legal and paying) job. Sure, they got disability and welfare, which was normally enough to pay the crappy rent for the crappy apartment and a few others bills, as well as some cheap food supplies, but sometimes things happen. Like, her mother's wheelchair went careening down a flight of stairs and she needs some physical therapy and a few days rest in the hospital. Things like that.

That's about when Artemis starts knicking food from the mountain.

It's not a conscious thing, not really. It's more of a habit- a habit born from her father shrugging his beefy shoulder's once or twice a year (probably as some sort of test) and saying 'sorry baby girl, but we've got squat for money and squat for food. Go steal a kid's lunchbox, or somethin'. Gotta take one for the team.' (She'd always had to bite her tongue or else she'd start asking questions. Questions like; what _team_ , Dad? There's two people living together here, two people who sometimes train and work together, but there is no _team_.)

So she eats on the run. Fast food, M'gann's baking, random nonperishable's that either appear on the front steps (most of which are stolen before she finds them. Hey, this _is_ Gotham) or are shoved into her arms by a certain older sister who threatens her with an untimely demise should this slight to her cold-hearted bitch-atude ever see the light of day.

It's not really healthy and she knows it, but she's not _starving_ herself or anything drastic like that. She's acutely aware of how long her body can go without food and function normally; when it's time to snatch food from the cupboards; and when it's getting to the point it's going to start affecting her fighting if she doesn't own up to someone (Preferably Ollie or Black Canary; neither of whom judge her for her weakness) or be possibly forced to take leave from the team (It's kinda hard to fight crime with bones the consistency of paper. _That's_ why there's so much health food flown into the mountain in bulk every week; that, and Wally's insatiable appetite). She's not about to put herself at risk over something like being dirt poor and being too damn proud to admit it.

So she snags some food from the fridge after every mission to snack on and steals some of the nonperishable cans from the cabinets once they all leave. No one's ignorant- they all know she's doing it, but no one says anything. Something tells her it's probably better this way.

She's chewing on an apple (the second of three or four) when Red Tornado, in all his mechanical maternal-dom, suggests that perhaps it would be best if everyone stayed the night to make sure that their healing patterns aren't disrupted.

Basically, he's worried (if it could be called that; y'know, him being a robot and all) and he doesn't want them clambering up and down buildings while injured to get home, which most of them- Artemis included- can't deny that they do.

She calls her mother, warning her that the place is 'crawling with teenage testosterone' and 'if she came home now she could get a head start on her chores, you know' and 'hey, I'm not sleeping in this stupid uniform. That's all I'm saying.' An hour later Ollie drops by with a pair of her favorite pajamas (a lavender strapless undershirt and a hacked off pair of jeans) with a note attached to them going on and on about how 'sleeping amongst teammates is one of the greatest challenges her trust could undergo' and some other philosophical nonsense she probably doesn't mean, which Artemis privately translates as 'Deal with it, get some sleep, and don't forget you have chores waiting for you at home.'

Gee, thanks mom. Way to help her out of a pinch. What happened to the whole 'stern mother' persona she was trying to fulfill?

* * *

Artemis doesn't like sleeping when she knows other people are nearby, no matter who those people may be.

Hell, she doesn't even like sleeping in her own stinking room because she knows her mother is right down the hall. The only reason she can allow that intrusion (Sportmaster mostly took off for hotels and hideouts when he wasn't off on some mission; to 'better her self-reliance skills', of course) is because her mother is in a _wheelchair,_ and while she was still more than capable of killing her with a plastic utensil, getting out of bed to do said killing with said utensil isn't exactly the quietest way to get around. Not to mention that her wheels get stuck in the doorway at least once a week (Vietnamese cursing is enough to wake _anybody_ up, no matter what time of night it is).

And, even then, she sleeps with her door and window's locked and a taser under her pillow. A taser isn't exactly a good battle weapon, true, but it's more than enough to buy her time to sprint across the room at speeds a person who spent their days chasing after bank robbers with machine guns could achieve, which is _pretty damn fast_ , and grab her arrows from where she leans them against her closet door while the intruder is busy writhing in electricity-induced convulsions.

Now, that may sound bad, but Artemis is dead certain that her mother still sleeps with her old blades and the steak knife from the kitchen. So there.

It's not that Artemis doesn't trust her teammates. She does. She knows with bone-deep certainty that- judging from their reactions post 'the big fail' mission (Or; when the world ended but it didn't. Whichever works best for you)- they would never try to hurt her unless they absolutely had too. (You can never be absolutely certain of your safety in a world like this; Artemis knows that second best) (Robin, I'm looking at you). But, technically speaking, she also trusts her sister _not_ to kill her and her father to _try_ and kill her. Just sayin'.

(It's complicated.)

So... yeah. No sleep for her tonight (Not that that's anything out of the ordinary.)

She considers just _getting up_ and maybe checking over her arrows or something, but the only soundproofed room in the mountain is Robin's (you know, just in case someone manages to break through all the defenses and slip past the cameras undetected. What? Miracles can happen), and the _last_ thing she needs is for Superboy to turn to her during breakfast and say, "You were fixing your arrows last night." Because he _would_ , because he'd be curious, or just trying to move the conversation along or something, and she'd be berated for it every which way, like she _doesn't already know_.

So she just waits the night out, only moving when the side she's laying on grows numb.

It's around four thirty when she finally gives up and gets out of bed. She could get dressed or something, but these are her _teammates_ for gosh sake. They've seen her in far less than an undershirt and sweatpants, as bad as that must sound.

She heads for the kitchen first because, as cliche as this may sound, they drink tea like it's water in her household, so why the heck not. But then she realizes that they don't have any tea leaves, or even a kettle (that she can find) so she shrugs her shoulders, because, whatever, coffee works too.

Zatanna crawls out second and slumps into a chair. "It's too early for life."

Artemis personally agrees with her, but she's heard so many 'Deal with it's over the years from her father that she doesn't even think to mention it. "I made coffee."

Zatanna groans again. "I don't drink coffee."

"Then I don't know what to tell you, Z." She leans against the counter.

"Tell me you're going to make breakfast."

That startles a laugh out of her. "I don't cook." Well, no. That was a lie. Her father had disappeared for weeks on end back when she was little to test her 'survival skills', so she could cook. She just couldn't cook breakfast. "I mean, if you're cool with black omelets and pancakes, then that's one thing, but..."

"I'll do it." M'gann breaks in, shuffling into the room. Artemis can't help but theorize that Martians are either awake or sleep, with no in between, because otherwise that perpetually happy look on her face _wouldn't be there_. "Do I... smell coffee?"

Artemis raised her cup of the black substance of life, sans sugar or creamer (neither of which Artemis uses). "Coffee, I can do. You want a cup?"

"No, no." She shook her head. Artemis obediently steps out of the way of the stove. A cooking Martian is a Martian whose way one stays out of. At least, if they want to eat, that is. Artemis learned that from watching Wally be shooed out of the room more than once. "I'd just wondered. Have you been up long?"

Yes. "Not really." She stretches. "Just thought I'd get some exercise on my sore ankle."

"Omigosh Artemis, I'd forgotten all about that!" She points at the kitchen table. "Sit down. _Now_."

"Alright, alright, geez." She does what she's told for once, because pissing off a Martian is _another_ surefire way of not getting breakfast, even if Artemis isn't sure what the big deal is. Her father had trained and sparred with her even when she was harboring far worse than a sore ankle. She was also dead certain that, had it been during the school week, her mother would've sent her to school with nary a doctor's note. ("Suck it up, I'll pick you up so you don't have to walk home on it, I love you, don't get into a fight or kill anyone, and I swear to god if I see one more bad testing grade there won't be _any_ extracurricular's until you get your grades up, do you hear me?")

(Which is a lie, of course. Mom would never take away her arrows, not when she was living in a place like Gotham in a uniform as short-skirted as hers going to a school as rich as the Academy. She wasn't going to lose her youngest daughter.)

See, _this_ is why Artemis likes spending her mornings at home. She always get so annoyingly depressing and sad in the mornings.

M'gann's halfway through making an omelet Artemis is sure she's seen in one of those top-notch cooking shows when a blur of ginger slips by, and suddenly Wally's sitting right next to her like she _isn't_ a woman capable of killing him with her bear hands (not right this second, of course, not while she's still nursing her coffee mug like it's a lifeline, but it could happen. Like, during training, or something.)

"I smelled food." Is all he says, but that's all anyone should expect to get before breakfast. A speedster without food is a lot like an archer without coffee. (Only she could still fight without caffeine, so that makes her the winner, right?) "Ooh, can I have some?" He reaches for her coffee mug.

"Fat chance, Kid." She jerks her mug away. "Nobody's _that_ stupid."

"Aw, come'on. Just one sip."

"No." She wants to cross her arms and say _hell no_ , but on a team of superheroes with more triggers floating around then warnings for them, it's best to bite your tongue when it comes to cursing. At least, that's what all the mentors kept telling her.

"Wally, would you please set the table?" M'gann asks, and, seriously, how does that girl do it? If that were Artemis cooking, she would've thrown the spatula at his head and told him to shut it.

(And that's probably why nobody ever asks her to cook, but whatever).

"On it, babe." Another blur, this time to the cabinet. Artemis finds it oddly fitting that he knows exactly where all the plates and silverware are in the kitchen. In any kitchen, honestly. He probably has a homing device in that suit of his somewhere.

He sets her plate down with the air of someone doing an incredibly important task, when really it's just dishes, and Artemis did that at home enough to know that it didn't really matter so long as you didn't _throw_ the stupid things. "You could say thank you." He says, metaphorical nose in the air.

"Or I _could_ throw this at you. Your choice." He sticks his tongue out and moves away. Artemis vaguely wonders when her threats started being taken with such ease. If it weren't so damn early she might've actually done it.

"Morning, everybody." Robin appears out of freakin' nowhere like always and sits down, fully dressed with his usual tinted sunglasses. For a short, rather stupid second, Artemis wonders if he sleeps in the stupid things. But then she remembers he's a child of Gotham sleeping in a somewhat unknown area filled with cameras; _of course_ he sleeps with his shades on. Heck, he probably slept in his whole uniform, cape and all.

(Not that she didn't lay in bed all night with her arrows and bow right next to her or anything, but still. Sleeping with a cape sounded a lot stupider than sleeping with weapons, albeit a tad less dangerous, unless he slept with his utility belt on, which she doubted).

"Good morning, Robin!" M'gann greets him. Zatanna echoes the statement. Artemis grunts. "How did you sleep?"

"Hey, is that coffee?" He ignores the question with practiced ease, grabbing a mug from the cabinet. Artemis' eyes narrowed at the dismissal.

"I think what Boy Blunder here is trying to say is that, he didn't."

"Like you have any room to talk, 'Mis." He answers smoothly, and, okay, he kinda had a point. But at least she's honest about it, right?

(...Man, it sucks, being from Gotham. Being related to... well, you know. Pretty much every blonde male in her family that had made her who she was today.)

(Hey, at least Jade has her back when it came to keeping secrets. That's _so_ much more than Dad ever gave her.)

His coffee's blacker than Batman's cowl and probably as cold as ice by now, but Robin doesn't complain as he takes a sip. He probably likes it that way, the weirdo.

"So... who wants the first omelet?" M'gann lifts the pan up a bit in demonstration.

Going, going-

"Oh, me!"

Gone.

Watching Wally eat is like watching a cat yawn. It's _almost_ cute... but then it opens its mouth. Artemis looks away in disgust.

Wolf trots in as a warning that Conner is coming, not that anyone didn't already take notice to the heavy steps coming down the hall.

Zatanna, looking noticeably more awake now that more people have come into her morning and crashed around like bulls in China shops through it, stands up. "I got Wolf's breakfast." Like anyone else was interested, or anything.

Conner comes in with another good morning and sits down across from her. Artemis would take the offer presented to her, but she's not awake enough to goggle at eye-candy in a blatant attempt at making her teammate jealous. Hasn't even been wanting to do that recently. It's too much work with too little pay off.

Of course, the party can't really begin until Kaldur comes in, also fully dressed. Artemis wonders if Atlanteans even sleep, but it doesn't matter either way. It would be downright unnatural if Kaldur came into a room in shorts and boxers. Horribly wrong, even. It just wasn't his style.

"Good morning, all."

Artemis doesn't grunt at Kaldur. She's not that stupid, or that crazy. One couldn't grunt at the leader; not if they wanted to remain on said team. That, at least, she'd learned from her family. "M'gann made breakfast."

"So I gathered." He turns to look at her a long moment, eyes curious. "You are wearing your hair down." He says finally.

"Huh?" She runs a hand through her hair. Oh. Duh. "I don't wear it up when I sleep." Does anybody? "Didn't think about putting it up." Hell, she's not even certain _where_ her hair-tie is right this second, and she's not all that interested in looking for it quite yet.

Kaldur nods. "I see." He turns away to speak with the others.

Artemis is suddenly aware, more so than ever, just how _comfortable_ she is with these people. She barely knows anything about them (even less than that, counting Robin), yet here she is, hair undone, arrows in her temp-room, in a stinking undershirt and _sweats_ , scars on display for anyone to stare at. She wasn't raised for this. She wasn't raised for any of this.

Maybe, just maybe, this is what people mean when they said something was 'disgustingly domestic'; people sitting around in sweats (not counting Rob or Kal, of course) and talking about nonsense while simultaneously avoiding any landmines and just not being worried about what anyone else has to say/think about it.

If it is, then... Artemis kinda likes it.

Breakfast came and went in a blur of idle conversation and food. Artemis tried to ignore the sense of belonging bubbling up inside of her (because she- the daughter of two villains and sister to an assassin- would never truly belong with these people. She'd been telling herself that from the beginning) She focused instead on stuffing her face with food. She hadn't eaten before the mission, and it was really starting to tell on her now.

Right. She should probably steal some cans on her way out. And call her mother while she was at it, so she didn't start thinking she'd gotten herself killed.

It probably said something about Artemis' character when she felt more comfortable in her hero uniform than she did in her school one, despite the latter being the safer of the two. Sure, Gotham Academy had a hostage situation crop up at least once every few months, but she didn't have to run _towards_ the bullets in her school uniform. Or carry a lethal weapon on her at all times (Well, she took the paring knife from the kitchen with her just in case, but that wasn't that big of a deal. Paula had wanted her to sneak in a handgun).

Even still, green trumped over black every time. And, also, jeans trumped skirts in everything but fashion. Just sayin'.

"I'm heading out." She called, like anyone was actually listening, and headed for the Zeta's.

"Artemis, wait! I made you some lunch." M'gann floated over with, of all things, a lunchbox. "You know, in case you get hungry."

"Right. That's normally what food is for, but..." She blinked at the box. "I mean, I have food at my house, M'gann. And I don't know where to return this to." Or where the Martian even got a lunchbox, for that matter.

"Artemis."

"Yeah?"

"Just take the box." The Martian chided her kindly, _still_ managing to be all smiles.

"It's not even a school day." Artemis countered.

"I know, that's why I made it." Ouch. Apparently, the whole 'free lunch' bit had tipped some people off.

"Uh, thanks, I guess." She awkwardly grabbed the handle and lifted it up. She could handle bow and arrow's with ease, but give her a lunchbox and she was clueless. Artemis internally chided herself.

"Not at all." And then she was gone.

Alrighty then. Apparently, in M'gann's mind, staying the night equated to handing out lunchboxes. Artemis would just have to remember that.

Not that she was going to do any of this again, of course. She had her pride.

(Right?)

 **Author's Note: So... no real plot resolution or character development here, just team fluff. Not that fluff is bad or anything.**

 **Also, my 151st story. No shame in braggin' about that. =)**

 **No flames! Don't like don't read! Review!**


End file.
